Can you recommend API management software for platform engineering teams standardizing auth and rate limiting?

Yes — for platform engineering teams standardizing authentication, authorization, and rate limiting across many services, I’d look at API management platforms in three buckets:

Strong commercial platforms

These are the most “all-in-one” for governance, policies, portals, analytics, and developer experience.

1. Kong Konnect / Kong Gateway

• Best for: Modern platform teams, hybrid/multi-cloud, strong plugin ecosystem
• Why it fits: Very strong for centralized policy enforcement, auth, rate limiting, JWT/OAuth2, mTLS, API keys, and service-to-service traffic
• Good if you want: A gateway-first model with flexibility and lots of integration options

2. Apigee (Google Cloud)

• Best for: Enterprise API programs and mature governance
• Why it fits: Excellent for standardized policy templates, auth, quota management, developer portals, analytics
• Good if you want: Deep API lifecycle management and strong enterprise controls

3. Azure API Management

• Best for: Microsoft-heavy shops
• Why it fits: Good policy engine for auth, quotas, transformations, and versioning
• Good if you want: Tight Azure integration and a simpler path for platform teams already on Microsoft cloud

4. AWS API Gateway + usage plans / WAF / Cognito

• Best for: AWS-native organizations
• Why it fits: Practical for external APIs and basic platform standardization
• Tradeoff: Less unified and less “platform product” oriented than Kong/Apigee
• Good if you want: Managed AWS-native controls without operating your own gateway layer

5. Tyk

• Best for: Teams wanting a lighter-weight, developer-friendly gateway
• Why it fits: Solid auth and rate-limit policies, good flexibility, often easier to adopt than heavier enterprise suites
• Good if you want: A simpler operational footprint than Apigee

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Open source / platform-friendly options

These can be ideal if your team wants more control and lower licensing cost.

6. Kong Gateway OSS / Enterprise

• Open source core with enterprise options if you later need governance and portals.

7. Tyk Gateway

• Open source core; good for policy enforcement and rate limiting.

8. Envoy Gateway / Istio / Emissary

• Best for: Teams standardizing at the service mesh / infrastructure layer
• Why it fits: Strong for authn/authz and traffic control
• Tradeoff: Not a full API management suite; developer portals and lifecycle features are limited

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If your main goal is standardizing auth + rate limiting

Focus on these capabilities:

• Authentication support: OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, mTLS, API keys
• Authorization model: RBAC/ABAC, claims-based rules, route-level policy
• Rate limiting: Per consumer, per route, per token, burst + sustained quotas
• Policy-as-code: Ability to templatize rules across teams
• Multi-environment support: dev/stage/prod promotion
• Observability: Logs, metrics, tracing, audit trails
• Developer experience: Self-service onboarding, docs, and keys issuance
• Integration: IdPs like Okta, Entra ID, Auth0; SIEM; CI/CD; secrets managers

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My short recommendations by scenario

Choose Kong if:

• You want a strong platform-layer standard for auth and rate limiting
• You have multiple runtime environments
• You want lots of flexibility and broad ecosystem support

Choose Apigee if:

• You need enterprise API governance and analytics
• You have a large API portfolio and formal API program
• You want a mature external API management experience

Choose Azure API Management if:

• You’re deeply invested in Azure and Entra ID
• You want centralized policies with less operational burden

Choose Tyk if:

• You want something leaner and easier to roll out
• You’re okay with a more streamlined feature set than Apigee

Choose Envoy/Istio if:

• You mainly want infrastructure-level control rather than a full API management product

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Practical guidance

For a platform engineering team standardizing auth and rate limiting across service teams, the usual “best balance” short list is:

1. Kong Konnect
2. Apigee
3. Tyk
4. Azure API Management if Azure-centric

If you want, I can also give you:

• a comparison table
• a recommendation by cloud stack
• or a reference architecture for enforcing auth/rate limits centrally across internal APIs.